A Kiss Is All It Takes
by The Cheshire Smile
Summary: A conversation of pain and destruction leads to a bottle of lye. The very first space monkeys have evolved. Please R&R.


First time writing and posting anything online. Whoo.

This story is not a reflection of my personal views, purposely breaks all grammatical rules, and is not a tribute to Chuck Palahniuk. (I have yet to read the novel.) If anyone gets a kick out of this one-shot, I'll be pleased. Thanks, and enjoy.

Jack and Tyler sit in their kitchen with two soon-to-be members of fight club, talking of pain and destruction. This is where Tyler gets the idea to begin building an army, and these are the very first 'space monkeys'.

A Kiss Is All It Takes

How could Tyler Durden, out of all people, possibly think that inflicting pain on others is a bad thing?

There's a word to describe that, I know it.

_I am Jack's failing memory._

Tyler was standing next to the counter in his kitchen, stirring a mug of coffee. Not straight coffee - cream and a heap load of sugar, not that he needed it. I swear to God he never sleeps, yet always has energy to spare.

I wondered if the white particles in my own cup were bad milk or bits of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling.

"I've always thought of pain as a release, but never actually tried it," said Martin.

An ordinary conversation in Tyler's kitchen.

Adrian was slumped in a chair beside him, picking at a piece of duct tape covering a crack in the table. They were the potential new recruits to the club. The first of their kind, and they had no idea. Think of the first monkeys shot into space. If these ones failed, we could always find others.

"You're crazy. My doctor claims I'm a manic-depressive, but I'd never cut myself. That's just stupid."

I looked at Tyler, who merely smiled and kept stirring.

"Not true. Pain can open your mind; it doesn't have to be self-destructive. It's just another way of escaping. Look at that Sun Dance thing that the indians do - hanging themselves from hooks and all that."

Martin always had a new age psychotherapeutic come back parked on the tip of his tongue. He was a master of the rhetoric, and talking to him was a little like talking to the machine lady on the other end of your telephone. I've always imagined her as the Statue of Liberty with an earpiece, although I can't explain why.

"Indifference is the best painkiller. And there's no hangover or blood to clean up," said Adrian, tapping a nail against his teeth. A nervous habit.

"Indifference is a sin. It separates people, dividing emotion and leaving humanity bereft of the social contact that it needs to survive on the most arbitrary levels."

Martin didn't get out as much as he used to.

"Whatever. Cutting is just self-mutilation. People do it to get attention."

Like the rest of us, Adrian had learned to unconsciously block out all the Dr. Phil meets Buddha rants that Martin constantly spewed.

"What about you, Tyler? Ever thought about cutting yourself up?"

Tyler tapped his spoon on the edge of his mug like someone about to make a toast, either not noticing, or ignoring the piece of porcelain that chipped off as he did. Probably the former.

"Thought about it, yeah."

Inspiring words from Master Tyler.

Martin jumped at the bait, "And do you agree that it's not all about self-destruction?"

"No. It's _all_ about self destruction."

Adrian raised his hand for a high five. Tyler ignored it.

"That's the point, man. Self-mutilation is the key to release." He left the room for a moment and came back with an old, soggy magazine. Setting it down on the table, he flipped through it until he came to some obscure advertisement of a sun kissed blond girl, arms around a male model. Tyler stabbed a finger at the page,

"Is this what a man looks like? Fuck it, is this what a woman looks like?"

Martin blinked, "What? I guess not. No. It's what people think they should look like. But what does this have-"

"Exactly. It's what people think they should look like. It's what they all improve themselves for. Self-improvement is just masturbation. Now, self-destruction…" Tyler gave a nonchalant grin and went back to leaning against the counter, picking up his mug, "That's the answer."

There's a word to describe that, I know it.

_I am Jack's lack of vocabulary._

Adrian snorted, "So what're you gonna do, go hack up yourself to defy Cosmopolitan?"

Tyler took a gulp of coffee. "No. People can achieve self-destruction in any way, shape or form. Mental or physical. But you can't see mental scars. People craving that kind of destruction these days are too conditioned to think up anything for themselves. Cutting is a known option, so they follow it. Like lemmings."

"But what about the people who aren't lemmings, what about the people who do it for insight, like the indians?" Martin argued.

"Fuck the indians. Take a look at Van Gogh; he cut off his own ear. While other people were whipping themselves for a silent God, he was slicing himself up for his own purposes and making a difference. That's art right there."

Sometimes I think Tyler would've made a good politician if he weren't so pro-anarchy. But he would never go into politics. He always had to be the underdog biting the ass of some politically hierarchical post-man.

"So I'll come up with something better than cutting," Martin challenged.

Tyler smirked over the rim of his mug. It had a picture of a little yellow smiley face on it. How fitting. The only thing it was missing was a caption at the bottom reading: _I am your façade of modern happiness._

I thought: _I am a little yellow circle._

No wonder MSN is so popular. We get to express our deepest emotions as little yellow circles with pixels for facial expression. Like Pavlov's dogs drooling at the ring of a bell, humans of today find happiness in the squeaky _uh oh_ that announces a new message. Life is inherently meaningless, God is dead, emotion is just a chemical reaction, kill yourself now. But maybe I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

Tyler paused for a moment, then: "What if I told you I've already thought of something?"

An almost hostile question.

"What if I said I'd do it?"

An almost hostile answer.

A match was struck, and Tyler's eyes lit as if they had been soaked in gasoline. He was smiling, and there's a word to describe that, but I still couldn't think of it.

_I am Jack's premature Alzheimer's._

Ten minutes later I was a ticking time tomb, but the idiot who constructed me accidentally wired red to blue. Everything in me that still clutched desperately to the collective lie called morality urged my limbs to pull Martin away from Tyler's extended hand. But – as my mental clock counted down to zero – nothing happened. No explosion, not even a twitch. I quietly closed the door on what was left of my moral integrity. Fuck human values, I was never very stable to begin with.

"Give me your hand," Tyler said. I knew the routine.

I saw everything in slow motion. His tongue slid over his lips and I instantly remembered the word I had been looking for.

Sociopath.

Now, I was never one for labels and stereotypes, but as I watched Tyler kiss Martin's hand and the bottle of lye tip a little further, I felt inclined to stick the post-it label back onto the jar that is Tyler Durden and seal it with caution tape.

WARNING: Contents of this jar may contain superficial charm, the ability to manipulate, a grandiose sense of self, pathological lying, lack of remorse, the need for stimulation, impulsive nature, criminal versatility, and violent sex.

Tyler is the new Van Gogh. Tyler is the new Saviour. God doesn't want us, but that doesn't matter because Tyler is the new God. We are still lemmings, but Tyler is leading us to a death more spectacular than the side of a cliff. A kiss is all it takes, and there's nothing I can do about it.

Not _amen_, just _slide_.


End file.
